Rapid Growth at Neural

Neural Technologies, the specialist fraud vendors who now position themselves as suppliers of risk management, has been listed amongst the top 100 fastest growing privately-owned British companies. See the press release here.

The news comes not long after Neural acquired mobile VAS provider Prime Creation Technology. How are these two stories to be interpreted? On one hand, profit growth has been strong over the last three years. On the other hand, why move into other sectors, and dilute your base, unless you think that is needed to sustain results? The idea that revenue-generating products are a good fit with leakage-preventing products is questionable. The best justification for leakage prevention is that there may be something wrong with the way revenues are being generated, and it is difficult to stay impartial when you sell products that could be used to check that some of your other products have been implemented correctly. We shall have to see if Neural’s strategy will enable it to continue to improve profits at the same impressive rate. Of course, strong growth followed by diversification can sometimes cause hiccups – just ask Subex.

About the Author

Eric is the Editor of Commsrisk. Look here for more about the history of Commsrisk and the role played by Eric.

Eric is also the Chief Executive of the Risk & Assurance Group (RAG), a global association of professionals working in risk management and business assurance for communications providers.

Previously Eric was Director of Risk Management for Qatar Telecom and he has worked with Cable & Wireless, T‑Mobile, Sky, Worldcom and other telcos. He was lead author of Revenue Assurance: Expert Opinions for Communications Providers, published by CRC Press. He is a qualified chartered accountant, with degrees in information systems, and in mathematics and philosophy.